Breakouts and Breakdowns

One of the questions that was recently asked was:

>What does upside and downside breakout mean?

Breakout is price movement of a stock through an identified level of support or resistance. The upside or downside breakouts are traded with the presumption that the move will continue. Traders who keep an eye on the upside or downside breakout, generally, look for increase in the volume( number of shares traded ) for the breakout bar. Higher this volume, bigger and stronger the breakout. The traders will buy the stock when the price breaks above a level of resistance and sell when it breaks below support. The traders may also buy the stock when the price bounces from a support level with higher volume. Similarly, The traders may also sell the stock if the price declines from a resistance level with noticeable increase in volume.

A downside breakout is also referred to as breakdown. This is usually a bearish sign.

askStockGuru tries to identify both breakouts and breakdowns. It also checks for increasing volume. Although we track degree of breakout, we have not made the indicator available to our users. We do plan to do publish that indicator in the future.